The Living Hope of Easter | The Greatest Building, The Greatest Story (1 Peter 2:1-12)

Jesus purified us and made us new! So it doesn’t make sense to keep living the way we used to. Let’s live new lives, imitating Him. Loving the hard-to-love. Let’s grow in our faith by continuing to be fed with his Word. Devour it! He is building us into a building – the greatest building – a spiritual building – His Church! The greatest building with the greatest story! He is the cornerstone and foundation. Our purpose is to glorify God in the world around us with our lives, our words, and our witness!

Transcript

I’m proud to say that I grew up a local-channels kind of kid. Our family didn’t have cable or satellite for most of my childhood, but we did have shows we loved to watch, and for a while, there was one show we never missed: The Biggest Loser, which is still going strong today. If you’ve never seen it, it’s a reality show where contestants who struggle with weight go through 30 weeks of intense training and healthy dieting to lose weight through various challenges, and possibly win the title of the biggest loser. As brutal as the training was, without fail, the new diet proved to be the more difficult struggle. Many of these contestants lived off fast food, and desserts, many using food to mask a deeper psychological struggle. They desired to lose weight, yet what they were feeding themselves got in the way. The expression “you are what you eat” is pretty true, and not just with food. You are what you eat when it comes to what you’re consuming spiritually. And what sets the tone for what you consume? How you live? Hope. Hope affects the mind, soul, and body. Peter will show us what real growth is all about by walking us through three questions: What growth do we ravenously desire? How does that growth happen? Why do we need this growth? 

Now this whole topic of growth, have you noticed how it’s reached semi-divine status in our American society? We’re told through various media if you’re not growing intellectually, economically, socially, or occupationally, you’re at risk of losing. Which comes straight from the postmodern author, William Burroughs, considered one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century, who wrote, “If you're not growing you're dying.” So, as you can imagine we’ve become addicted to anything we perceive as growth. We choose to follow the influencer with more followers, we choose to join the company that is opening the most branches, we choose a church based on who is adding more new people, or who has the most energetic vibe and not as much on what they’re teaching. Now can you see what’s underneath this growth addiction?  Culturally, we have become very superficial. People increasingly misunderstand growth as merely numerical or economic: Are you worth my emotional, spiritual, and economic investment? But, that being said, the drive we have for growth is a God-given gift, it’s part of his design for humanity, but what growth do we really long for?

Peter says, “You need to think like a baby.” “Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation.” What happens when a newborn baby fresh out of the womb is hungry? They cry…A LOT. They are ravenous for nutrients NOW. Babies want to grow. It’s how they’re wired, to desire growth. But a baby cannot will herself to grow two inches. But she desires the right nutrients so her body designed for growth can do what it was made to do, and this milk is no fringe benefit, it’s life or death. Now Peter takes that analogy and applies it to our spiritual growth. Peter is saying you’ve been born into a living hope, a new identity by God’s grace, that’s faith. Faith, like a newborn baby, is designed for growth. Growth so we grow closer to God, growth so we can build up the Christian community, growth as hope-bringers to the world. We as children of God want to grow, and what kind of growth do we desire? Peter says, “So that by it you may grow up in your salvation.” 

But maybe you’re thinking, “Hold up a second, I thought my salvation was guaranteed in Jesus? Is hope in Jesus uncertain somehow?” “I have to grow into it?” “What’s the deal?” Here’s the deal. The Scripture talks of salvation in many ways, salvation from earthly trial, salvation from sin, Satan, self, and death, and salvation at the end of time. Again, Peter keeps a strong focus on the last day when Jesus returns, and he says, “You have been born into a living hope and because you belong to God, how can we not want to live lives prepared for Jesus to come back?! To keep growing in the hope we have in Jesus?!” Again, only the Holy Spirit can cause that growth, but we crave the pure milk of the Word because as Peter said at the end of chapter one, the Word is the unchanging reality setting the tone for all we do, it gives us identity and empowers our God-given purpose, it gives continuity, it gives life. The Word gives you joy, peace, and hope, even when the circumstances are joyless, chaotic, and dark. How can we not be ravenous in drinking this Word milk? But you know as well as I do, often Satan convinces us to search for spiritual nutrients in all the wrong places.

All of us have go-tos for life nutrients, especially when we are feeling deficient. Have you noticed that? Think about it. When you experience sadness, disappointment, or anger, is there an activity you first turn to? Is there a thing you need to have right away? Is it popularity, looking for people to sustain you? Is it pleasure or substance, wanting an escape to cope? Is it respect, that even if you feel loveless at least you know people have a high opinion of you? Is it mindless distractions, TV, gaming, social media? It’s here that something is revealed about humanity, all of us have a ravenous desire for growth in relationships and most of all hope. This is why what you put your hope in is life or death. Without the right hope, forget coping, it’s impossible to live. It’s why Satan desires nothing for you but hopelessness and what does Satan do when you feel hopeless? He offers you not just empty spiritual calories, he offers you spiritual poison. But his poison always has a bit of sugar because he knows for us to swallow it, it must have a taste of sweetness. 

This is why Peter contrasts what tasting the Word is like versus tasting the spiritual poison Satan offers you every day. He says about the Word, “You have tasted that the Lord is good,” and by “good” Peter means, “You know what Jesus has done for you and how he loves you! Could you ask for anything more?!” But the other spiritual cuisine that’s out there, it’s contaminated by what? “Malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind.” The very things Jesus has washed away from you with his holy precious blood are what define what sin offers you. Peter reminds us that God has thrown all of that off of us. We long to grow closer to Jesus. We long for growth in trusting our God as he envelops our thoughts and lives with his hope. But how does that growth happen?

It starts with understanding taste. If you ever had COVID and went for a time without taste, you know what I’m talking about when I say taste affects your appetite. The first time that I had COVID, I remember how little I felt hungry because I didn’t crave anything. It was probably the healthiest I ever ate! Yet, there was no enjoyment in eating. Spiritually if we put our ultimate hope in anything but him, if we cope with our disappointments with endless social media scrolling, social isolation, or putting up walls, we’ll only have joylessness. But you and I have tasted the hope of Easter and we can’t get enough! We have tasted and seen that the Lord is good! We crave the spiritual milk of the pure Scriptures! It’s why one of our core values as a church is that we take all of God’s Word seriously and proudly standing firm in it. We obsess over how precious Jesus is to us, how sweet the taste of the gospel is.

In this way, God’s grace makes you a Bible addict. Edward Clowney coined this when he wrote, “Christians must be addicted to the Bible.” But maybe you’re wondering: How can the Bible become so sweet that it’s addictive? Maybe you’ve tried reading it often but you feel like you’re not getting a lot out of it. This is where Peter’s present tense “taste” is crucial. He’s saying don’t just taste it once, but like a baby, keep craving it, even if you get frustrated when it seems like it’s not enough, like a baby crying and struggling to eat at times, cry out to your heavenly Father in prayer and keep eating and the sweetness will be there. You know what’s crazy? Even the way God wired us psychologically is helpful!

Professor David Myers of Hope College says, “Repetition fosters fondness and repetition breeds belief.” Here’s a real-life example. Maybe you know the famous theologian Martin Luther. There was a time in his life when he poured over the Bible, reading it over and over again, but it never seemed to be sweet. He felt judgment, despair, and hopelessness over his sin, until the Holy Spirit did what he does best, at just the right time, the sweetness of the gospel came flooding into his life, “All at once I felt that I had been born again and entered into paradise itself through open gates. Immediately I saw the whole of Scripture in a different light.” How did that happen? Not by sheer willpower, but by letting God speak through his Word. Think of it this way, imagine it was a scientific fact that if you ate 4 ounces of brussel sprouts a day, you’d remove any chance of having cancer. How many of us would say, “Well, I don’t like the taste,” or “I tried it a couple of times and it’s not worth it,” NO! You know what would happen? You’d eat it every day and I bet over time you would even savor it, why? Because it would save. We all have the cancer of sin, far more lethal than even stage-four cancer, but God has given us his life-giving Word, that tells us of a grace that conquers every last effect of sin, always overcomes, and never leaves you.

I can’t help but think of the Christians who have battled dementia, that even in the darkness of their mind, there is a light that never goes out, when she hears “Our Father who art in heaven,” or when he hears Psalm 23, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want,” he’s locked in. Because here’s the wonder of the Word, it’s not you finding God, it’s through the Word your God finds you, and prepares a feast for you. It’s this delicacy of hope he feeds you, and as he fills you up, he does so so you in turn can fill up others. See this growth isn’t just for you, is it? This leads us to our final question, why do we need this growth?

This makes me think of Delores. During my time at the Seminary, I got to lead worship services in a local nursing home, and I would wheel Delores down to our makeshift chapel and take her back to her room afterward. She always had her Bible right there on her nightstand, and she caught me looking at it once, and she said, “I make sure to read the Bible every day because when one of those nurses asks me a question about Jesus, I’ll be ready!” Do see what Delores is teaching us about why we need this growth? Because we’re born for it! Again God’s hope is dynamic and by faith, we have the gospel motivation to grow. It’s who we are. We need this growth for ourselves so we can share real hope to our hopeless world. It’s what the church is here for, in fact, do you know the word for church comes from Greek ἐκκλησία which means called out? That’s exactly what Peter said right when he talks about who we are, “but you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” 

We are ravenous for faith growth, ravenous for Jesus, and ravenous to share hope. We want to share God’s living hope even if we get slandered, rejected, accused, because who does this make us like? The Cornerstone, our Jesus. We’re the new temple of God’s presence, that God’s hope goes out into the world not through a golden building or a tabernacle anymore, but through you and me.

What does that hope look like? It looks like you praying for the bully who makes you scared to walk into the classroom, or like loving your cousin who has made a mess of her life and brought the whole family with her, or like entering the awkwardness with a coworker who never misses a happy hour, or responding to the person on social media who bashes all your posts with kindness or forgiving the friend who betrayed you. The world looks at all those things and says, “Why?” You know how Peter answers? Peter says the best part of the growth God gives us through his Word is one day we’ll get to see the impact God made through us, because we obsess over the dream of seeing those “hard to love” people standing before Jesus when he comes back, and watching them receive a hug of unending joy. It’s why we hunger for this Word, live in this hope, and share what makes life worth living. Amen.